


The Warmth of Him

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [64]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, Comfort Reading, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Loki - Freeform, Love, Reader-Insert, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24432901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Just a bit of cuddling on the couch with Loki!
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [64]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 9
Kudos: 180





	The Warmth of Him

You lived for moments like this.

Night had fallen, tucked in around the windows like a blanket. Your apartment was quiet. The whole building seemed quiet. You couldn’t hear any sound from the apartments around you: no televisions blaring, no music pulsing, nothing. Loki was reading, his legs stretched out to rest on the coffee table in front of him, and you were leaning against his side. You often found yourself in this position. When you discovered that you liked having your back against him and that he liked putting his arm around you and resting his hand on your chest, that was pretty much it for you. Here and there, you managed to refocus your attention back onto the page in front of you, but mostly your thoughts were whirling giddily through your head. They always centered on Loki.

_He is here._

_He is touching me._

_He is letting me touch him._

_He is mine._

Maybe someday those kinds of thoughts—disbelieving and wondrous—would fade away. Maybe someday you’d accept all of those things as facts of life and not spend nearly as much time marveling at them. Or maybe not. The very idea of not being awed by his presence beside you felt wrong. Didn’t he deserve to be looked at with wonder? Didn’t he deserve people to understand how miraculous he was?

You gave up on your book and shut it quietly. After you’d swept it to the side, out of your lap, your hands were free to wrap around his. You moved carefully like always, trying not to catch his attention by doing anything too sharply, too quickly. You loved studying his hands. You could spend entire afternoons turning them over in yours, bending his fingers and watching how his skin and tendons flexed, tracing your fingertips along the lines of his palm. You’d told him, once, that you wanted to learn how to read palms so you could tell him his future. He’d only laughed and pulled your hand to his lips to kiss it.

 _I know my future_ , he’d replied. _I intend to spend it with someone beautiful and strong, and who looks at me like I’m the answer to every question that’s ever been asked._

Just remembering the words and how he’d looked at you was still enough to make your heart skip a beat.

You pressed your palm against his and lined up your hands as though to compare the sizes. Maybe by now you already had him memorized. The sight of his hand against yours was familiar. His fingers were longer, almost long enough that he could bend his fingertips down over yours like this. His hands seemed just a little bit bonier, or perhaps just a little more angular. They were certainly more manly. Comparing your hands like this always made you think your hands looked a little softer than you’d ever considered before. You hadn’t thought to like your hands until Loki came around.

You nestled a little bit closer to him, squirmed a little so that your back pressed even more firmly against him. This felt like such an intimate position. Trusting. You couldn’t see his face when you sat like this, but you trusted that he only ever looked at you with affection. You couldn’t see anything behind you, really, but you trusted him with something as vulnerable as your back, your spine, and trusted that he would keep you safe. You trusted that, on the rare occasion when his arm crept higher, beneath your chin, he only ever did it to tilt your head backwards so he could kiss your lips or your forehead. Being who you were had made it difficult for you to place much trust in anyone anymore—it was so much safer to trust yourself and yourself alone, so that when other people hurt or disappointed you, it was only ever a sad twinge of knowing resignation instead of betrayal. But Loki needed more trust. He needed to be trusted. You could see that in his face sometimes, especially when he talked about his brother. So you’d held your breath and leapt off of the side of a metaphorical cliff and forced yourself to trust that he’d catch you before you hit the ground.

And he did.

Realization was striking you more and more lately—Loki really and truly was a miracle. He’d faced so many enemies, and had come out on top each time. He survived neglect and self-loathing and loss and while he did keep a rather solid shell around himself for protection, he allowed you to slip inside so easily. You were ready to wait for years for him to so much as accept you as a friend. You had been ready to spend ages in quiet togetherness, never pushing any more than he really needed, keeping yourself nearby to show him that you weren’t going anywhere and that you wanted to spend time with him. But it hadn’t taken years. After a few weeks, he started smiling at you when you joined him somewhere in the Tower. After a month, he started to seek you out. 

And then, one night, you’d said something that had made him double over with laughter, and before you could even find a way to suppress that odd rush of pride that you felt, he’d stepped too close to you and taken your face in his hands and kissed you like he meant it.

You never really expected to make him laugh, but somehow you did it often. Each time he smirked at one of your jokes, or snorted, or full-on laughed, warmth rushed through you. He had a beautiful laugh, musical and catching, and it still seemed so rare coming from him that you didn’t bother to suppress your happiness at being the one to call it forth. Lately when he laughed, he’d reach for you and pull you in, almost for support, grasping your arm or your shoulder as he bent forward to hold his stomach with the other hand.

You could feel your smile breaking across your face at just the thought of him laughing with you. For you. Loki could be so soft, so open, so heartbreakingly genuine, that it often made you furious with the people who had mistreated him so long ago and made him shut himself off. If it wouldn’t absolutely mortify Loki, sometimes you fantasized about yelling at Thor. When you really dreamed big, you imagined traveling all the way to Asgard to give Odin a piece of your mind. Even before he’d kissed you, you were not afraid to tell the other Avengers when they were being pointlessly nasty about him. He didn’t need the protection of someone like you, just a normal human being without magic or superpowers, but you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t at least speak up for him.

You brought his hand to your mouth so you could press tiny kisses to the tip of each of his fingers. In general, it was difficult for you to imagine him ever needing someone like you at all, but you tried to keep that to yourself. Time and time again, he had shown you that he wanted you. And maybe that was more important than need.

He tilted your head backwards so he could catch your eyes. You felt yourself smile like always. The soft lamp light caught in his eyes and made them sparkle. He leaned down a bit to press a tender kiss to your forehead, and instantly, oosebumps erupted along the lengths of your arms. He murmured your name against your skin and you had to fight a moan. He knew exactly what he did to you, he had to, but that didn’t mean you always wanted to fall to pieces any time he kissed you. 

“For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,” he said, in the same tone that he always used when he was reading aloud to you. “That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

There was a sincerity in his voice that told you he was not merely reciting the words to you. He did that so rarely anyway, but tonight the words themselves felt so heavy that they had to be real to him. You shivered and hugged his arm to your chest.

“Is—” Your voice caught in your throat, hung up on nothing more than your love for him. “Is that Shakespeare?”

He hummed an affirmation against you and you felt the tiny nod that he gave as well. “But sometimes the things he writes makes me wonder if perhaps he could see into my very mind.”

You weren’t entirely sure what else to say, so you just lifted your chin a bit more to offer your lips to him. He smiled before his kissed you, and you heard his book drop, forgotten, to the floor.


End file.
